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A review by wrenreads2025
China Dolls by Lisa See
5.0
This was a book I couldn't put down. I heard Lisa See speak a couple of months ago as part of book tour for the release of China Dolls, and I was enchanted. See had interviewed a number of people who were entertainers in the first half of the century and wrote a fictionalized account of their adventures.
The book focuses on three Asian women who meet a few years before the start of WW2. We follow them for a decade as they develop their careers as entertainers. The novel explores complex relationships among these women, their family members, their lovers, their employers, and their co-workers in the entertainment industry. Working as a dancer is hard enough, but add in racial prejudice and the high emotions of war time, and it really gets tricky.
Women have such intense friendships. They have extremely high expectations, they can become really close, and they can hurt each other very deeply. Yes, the novel exposed me to more information about Chinese-American women and Japanese-American women from earlier decades. But it also explored issues about female friendships that are universal to women of all cultures.
The book focuses on three Asian women who meet a few years before the start of WW2. We follow them for a decade as they develop their careers as entertainers. The novel explores complex relationships among these women, their family members, their lovers, their employers, and their co-workers in the entertainment industry. Working as a dancer is hard enough, but add in racial prejudice and the high emotions of war time, and it really gets tricky.
Women have such intense friendships. They have extremely high expectations, they can become really close, and they can hurt each other very deeply. Yes, the novel exposed me to more information about Chinese-American women and Japanese-American women from earlier decades. But it also explored issues about female friendships that are universal to women of all cultures.